


Chasm

by unkahii



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/M, Fake Dating, Friends to Lovers, I love this story, Metaphors, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, and i love tobio, and they fall in love, kissing in the gym, reader tutors kags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26908957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkahii/pseuds/unkahii
Summary: — Four times you choose not to jump; fifth time you finally fall hopelessly. Endlessly.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 62





	Chasm

**ZERO.** There is something about the way your eyes slowly rise up to meet his that makes his heart shiver with anticipation. It’s something so alien to him, something so different from the usual quickening of pulse he experiences during matches. He doesn’t know why, but there’s a familiarity in your gaze. He feels like looking into a mirror. 

-“Sit down,” you say, mouth bending into the faintest of smiles. “It’s English grammar right?”

Something about a rule of gerunds—that’s what starts it: you become his tutor. But despite his poor emotional intelligence, Tobio Kageyama can tell that you become something more too. _Friends_ , that’s the word that immediately pops up in his head when a month and almost half later, you poke fun at his thick-headed antics and he finds himself smiling freely too. _Friends_ , he repeats in his mind, that must be the reason why he felt like looking at his reflection, or why the pace of his heart hastened by the tiniest fraction. It’s not a feeling Tobio is used to knowing, yet it is welcoming. 

But neither has he known the _other_ feeling steadily germinating in his chest—one that makes him feel as if he’s standing at the top of a tall cliff, the sound of the groaning sea being all that fills his ears, the salty sea breeze whipping through his hairs, with the desire in his heart that asks him to jump, to plummet and to give in to the nascent longing inside him that seeks for you all day. 

_That’s because we are friends_ , he repeats to himself. 

.

.

 **ONE.** There is barely anyone inside when you return to the class, the silence refuses to swallow the sound of your footsteps, and so they echo loudly against the floor. Yet, his gaze doesn’t turn towards you and instead continues with its mysterious meditation on the ceiling. You plop down on the seat and that’s when Kageyama finally decides to let his eyes fall back to you. 

-“What’s up?” you ask, tapping your fingers brusquely on the open page of algebra. Guiltily, he glances at the problems on the page, movements almost like a small gust of wind that’s somehow strangely sheepish. “Why lost in thoughts?”

Maybe if it were anyone else, Kageyama would have chosen to shut up, or asked the _other_ to shut up. But this time he doesn’t and allows his sapphire coloured eyes to trace a torturously slow path back to the ceiling. Tick-tock, a few seconds pass and when you’re just about to tell him off for being so distracted, his mouth opens. 

-“Someone asked me out.”

If it were anybody else, he would have never ever uttered this fact. Inside your chest, your heart abruptly accelerates. You gape at him, shocked and speechless. Kageyama’s blue eyes still remain fixated on the bland grey paint of the ceiling. 

-“What?!” you finally manage to splutter out. He peels his eyes away once more, this time the stony expression on his face morphing into a slightly jagged scowl. Despite the presence of the embarrassed red colour on his cheeks, he fixes you with a firm look. 

-“A girl asked me out,” he repeats, voice stuttering a little in between the syllables, a boyish tremble, a nervous hitch here and there, “just now, some ten minutes ago.”

-“And what did you say?”

-“I turned her down, of course.”

-“Again?”

(You will never talk of how a weight falls into the pit of your stomach and then disappears within the gap of only a few seconds, as if it were never there at all. But it _was_ there, though you mentally take the decision to never breathe a word about it to anyone and carry the secret to your grave. )

You expected Kageyama to be thoroughly pissed by your comment, but he only sighs, the taut muscles on his visage relax and a strange resignation swims in the watery shimmer of his eyes. They turn to the window, seeking a way out that is most likely not there at all. An escape route. 

-“Yes, again,” he reiterates. 

It makes you feel bad, truth be said, and your palm smoothens out the page of the maths textbook in a feeble attempt to bring his attention back to the reason why he is here to start with, to the topic of studies. 

Nonetheless, it is all in vain. Kageyama stares away into space, soaked in uncharacteristic deep thought. When he does it, his eyes appear like an ocean instead of the calm mountain lake you have always imagined them to be. Instead of barely there ripples, monstrous waves continuously crash onto one another. There is always disturbance, but it’s also impossibly deeper. 

_It must feel nice to fall._

-“I get your issue really,” you suddenly discover yourself humming out. Kageyama’s face wheels back towards you, dark brows furrowed. If you look closely, it’s never really as calm as the waters of a lake there (except maybe during matches when it’s completely business hours); it’s swirling with emotions that never get a chance to see the light of the day—a sea, an ocean rather. If it were anybody else, you would have selected silence too, but with him you don’t. “I know the feeling.”

You can acutely feel the itch from his scrutinizing gaze, waiting for you to go on. “Explain.” Ambiguity is there in your words, so you do—

-“I’ve had to turn down a couple or two people like that too.” You sigh and close the book shut. No studies will be done today, obviously. 

Outside, the sky is a pretty azure, with a few wisps of cottony clouds floating about aimlessly. You’re no longer looking at him, but in your mind, there’s the image of his eyes (whose shade is similar, but not exactly the same as the colour of the sky) widening under the effect of sheer surprise. An amused smile spontaneously creeps up your face as a result. _If you can be asked out, why not me?_

-“You turned them down?” he mutters. “Really?” 

And once more you dismissively pop the the tiny bubble of joy bursting in your chest because of the few hints of slight gladness that leak out among the notes of the _‘really’_.

-“Yes,” you reply, now turning to look at him, “it’s the same reason as yours, Kageyama-kun. I want to focus on my career.”

 _Why_ you vocalise the next few words, however, you don’t know. Like a sad confession, you state them with a painful indifference. Something queer quivers in his eyes, like the vehement shudder of young leaves when cutting winds card through them. 

-“They think it’s because I am stuck up on my high horse and all that and therefore their opinion is I think of them as beneath me. It’s not like that, I promise. I just don’t want distractions.”

That _something_ , now you recognise, is empathy. One that’s not the hollow kind, but one that genuinely says, _“I know it.”_

-“People always think I am stuck up, so it’s nothing new,” he scoffs. 

There’s such bitterness in his words that it mars the beauty of the blue of the sky, as if makes it turn dull and murky. It hits you sharply in the chest, leaving behind a sting. When your gazes lock, the wryness on your face is reflected on his. 

The rumour that has been flying around recently, says you, Y/n L/n, are dating the genius second year setter of the volleyball club. Both arrogant, ambitious freaks, you’ve heard the girls whisper behind their hands, it makes sense. _No, it doesn’t_ , you repeat in your head each time you happen to overhear such a conversation, _we’re just friends._

A minuscule voice inside your head says: _wish it were not that way_. Under the deafening roar of reality, although, that voice always gets suppressed, or you expertly put it aside, like now, ignoring it as if it were nothing. 

_It’s nothing_ , you repeat. 

The silence previously present makes a return, and all you can do is stare out. Even in the untainted expanse of the sky, some stain, some hiccup, a spoonful of melancholy is always found (that’s probably because colour is filtered through your gaze and it wears a glass built of your own issues). But doesn’t that make it all the more humane? That is why, it makes you want to drown in it. But only you don’t. Once you fall, the game is over. 

-“L/n, I was thinking of something,” Kageyama blurts out suddenly. Forced to turn to him, you discover a prominent blush on his face. “I have something in mind.”

An idea? That’s new. You nod your head in consent. “Go on.” 

You watch curiously as he sucks in a breath, very clearly braces himself before speaking out, voice ridiculously mechanical but with a boyish tremble, a nervous hitch here and there. 

-“Well…how about we…pretend. I mean, _act_ like…we’re…we’re dating? Then no one bothers us.”

A pause. You try to digest the words. 

-“Of course, it’ll all be fake,” Kageyama adds hastily, unsure if he has made his point clear. No answer comes from your side immediately. 

Just the word ‘fake’ somehow makes your heart unexpectedly sink. 

.

.

 **TWO.** _It’s not real_ , _it’s fake_ , you repeat internally. _We’re just **friends**_ , you emphasise, _pretending to date._

By the time you finally realise where you are, become finally aware of your surroundings and the place where you stand at, it’s already too late. The rocks rising out of the sea’s frothy waters, like fangs of a sullen monster, stare at your face. You’re at the edge of a tall cliff, about to plummet to a fall. Only, you don’t. You choose not to. 

Yachi and Yamaguchi glance at your hand in his and offer you knowing smiles. 

-“You know, Y/n,” Yamaguchi muses out loud, “you guys really suit each other.” Beside him, Yachi nods her head in consent. 

-“I totally agree, you look so cute together!”

The sweat collecting in his palm tells you of the blush that must have blossomed across his cheek, a sweet pink like the colour of the horizon at dawn. You can’t see it, but you know—a skill you’ve cultivated during your eight months and seventeen days long friendship. 

-“Umm…thank you?” you mumble, unsure of what to say. Yamaguchi grins wider. 

-“We’ll get going then,” the newly announced captain of the Karasuno VBC says, “see you later!”

-“See you later, Kageyama-kun, Y/n!” Yachi adds before both of them turn about and move away. You watch, as the black of their jackets melts away into the darkness of the evening. It’s not real, it’s fake. But the warmth of his fingers wrapped around yours is way too real to be fake. 

Nonetheless, as soon as Yamaguchi and Yachi are out of sight, he drops your hand. 

Somehow, the vacancy left behind echoes the vacancy within your ribcage in a scream. Without any logical explanation, your heart starts feeling like a hollow nut out of the blue. _But this is what it’s supposed to be like_ , you reason with yourself, _then why?_

Kageyama moves on ahead, naturally expecting you to follow in his wake, but only you don’t. The blue of eventide reminds you of the sea again—how its waters appear like a shade in between blue and black. You’ve always wanted to dive into the depths of that colour. You’ve wanted but never done it because you don’t dare. 

Halting in his tracks, he looks back at you questioningly. It’s been half a year since you texted Yachi and gave her the (false) news that you’ve started going out with Tobio Kageyama. It’s been exactly one hundred and ninety one days since you were asked by a sceptical Hinata if this rumour he was hearing about you and Kageyama was true. It’s been quite some time since you replied to that query in the affirmative. 

-“Why are you standing there?” he shoots at you, dark pencil-like brows joined in confusion. His voice, sharp like the merciless winds at the shore, jerks you awake. “Don’t you have cram school?”

Oh yes, that’s right, there’s the reason why you started this fake dating thing in the first place. You don’t want distractions. _Both arrogant, career-obsessed freaks_ , they still whisper, but less now. _Fake_ , the word now pierces your heart more cruelly. _Fake_. Wish it were not so. 

-“Right, Tobio,” you grunt and will yourself to move. Once you have reached him, he resumes his walk, side by side to you. 

(Only in dreams will this ever last. Your worlds are separate.) His hand dangles within your reach but you’re not entitled to hold it behind the public eye. 

You stand at the edge of a cliff, about to plummet to a fall, only you don’t; you choose not to give in to these incomprehensible feelings you have for him in your heart. 

.

.

 **THREE.** Sometimes Tobio cannot concentrate on his studies (he never can, truth be said), even if that is what he is here for. His thoughts drift away, the wind driving the boat, lost. All around there’s nothing but the calming blue of the sea—he doesn’t know where he is. 

-“Let me see,” you snap irritably and snatch the notebook away from him. “Which one?” you question impatiently. 

Lazily, he lifts his finger and points out the integral that’s causing him so much trouble. While you busy yourself with glaring at the problem in question, he seizes the chance to steal another glance at you. This is what he has been doing ever since he got here after practice ended early today. In fact, he does it fifty-one times every day: while he is passing by your class or passing by the library—keen to catch a single small glimpse. But then again, hasn’t he longed for you for more than a year? He has. 

The silence of the library somehow makes you look prettier. He can drown in this silence and stare at you forever, if that is possible. 

Tobio brings his head down on the table, his left cheek pressed flat against the surface. What one defines this strange feeling he is experiencing, is a question that goes round and round in his head in an endless undercurrent. He ponders on this once more and watches how your wrist flexes with each strike out you make on the paper in your quest to find out the best substitution for the value under the cube root. His puzzlement is similar to yours—a never ending cycle of trials and errors. Just like the x’s and y’s in the question, Tobio battles with unknowns, tries to unearth the meaning hidden behind his own emotions. 

(He wants to say he loves you. But he can’t because it will be meant romantically and you’re just friends)

You’ve found the right substitution and thus the speed of the mechanical pencil’s motion jumps up exponentially. There is that glitter in your eyes that appears like stars hanging in the expanse of an e/c sky. Miss smartypants, that’s what he calls you jokingly sometimes, the first person he could freely fool around with like that, the first person he could text at two in the morning and expect a reply from. _Friends_ , that’s the word that pops up in his head, but unlike before it makes his chest tighten in hurt. 

For that’s what you’ll ever stay. You’re Miss smartypants, he has nothing but volleyball. Solving a complicated differential equation makes you smile; when the spike from his toss scores a point, he does the same. While he’ll probably move on to play at the international stage once highschool graduations are done after four more months, you’ll without a trace of doubt shift to Tokyo and study at one of those huge universities he will never be able to memorise the names of. 

So, even if he wants to murmur his feelings to you, he can’t do it. The small ounce of smartness he owns, says it will never work out.

-“Done!” you announce triumphantly, beaming as brightly as the August sun, one in who’s light he will never mind basking for days on end. The unreasonable urges inside his heart slips out through the movement of his hand. Tobio goes on ahead and soundlessly tucks a few strands of h/c hairs dangling in front of your face behind your ears. The silence squirms and tenses itself up. Your eyes widen. He can feel his heart break into a gallop. During moments like these, he can’t help but think how soft your lips would be on his, how it would feel like to yank you closer into himself. 

-“Wh-what are you doing?” you stutter out. He finds it adorable and so he smiles. For a second at least, everything feels real. Not fake but real. 

-“Whoa, Y/n, you made Kageyama smile!” 

Your heads whip towards the speaker, Shouyo Hinata, at the same instant, who stands in between the shelves wearing an extremely smug look and a very wide grin. And suddenly, Tobio feels as if he has been flung into an abyss of hopelessness. 

You turn your face away and determinedly stare down at the completed sum in the notebook, mouth drawn into a taut, solemn line. 

-“What do you need?” he barks. Hinata grins wider. 

-“Mad that I disturbed your alone time with your girlfriend?” the last word leaves behind a bitter heft in the air. His scowl thus deepens. “Practice at six tomorrow, don’t be late. Now enjoy!” 

It’s meant in good humour, but the (annoying) lilt in the two syllables at the end still angers and makes Tobio a little sad. The bubble of forgetfulness has burst now. Your expressions have sunk and among the absent-minded scribbles that your pencil makes at one corner of the page, signs of your own discomfort are evident. 

The longer this lie drags on, the further he seems to get from you. Previously, asking you if something was wrong wouldn’t have cost him such a herculean amount of effort. Now, he can only pull the notebook away from under your hands quietly. 

He wants to say that he loves you, wants to kiss you, greedily hold your hand for real, and turn this lie you are living into truth. Only he doesn’t, because heaven knows if it will ever work out. He just rocks back and forth on his toes at the edge of cliff, wanting to plummet to a fall—wanting but never truly doing it. 

You want to let the flaming desire in your heart burn away all inhibitions you possess and meet his gaze that resembles the stormy sea, the violent waves and the endless blue where you’ve dreamt of drowning a countless times before. But only you don’t, because, truth be said, your worlds are separate; you’re just friends. 

.

.

 **FOUR.** When you enter the gym that’s empty but for him, half the late December sun has already gone down below the horizon. His eyes lock with yours and you both know there’s the same emotion curdling inside them, the same war, and the same fire. 

To fall or not to fall. 

He still stands at the edge, teeters on it. What hold him back are the shackles of rational thought and practicality. They cry for him to stop and so he does, while longingly his heart traces its usual path back to the tempestuous sea. If he falls, will he scamper to get out or love the sensation of the winds singing past his ears? 

He hopes it’s the second one. 

-“Hey,” you say. The volleyball he was about to pick up stays on the floor; he can attend to it later. The dying sunlight lends you an otherworldly look. 

“ _I miss you_ ,” he says mentally. “ _Say it out loud_ ,” he barks at himself. “ _I can’t_ ” he admits nervously. “ _Go on, she won’t mind._ ”

-“Hi,” he greets in the same dull way he greets his teammates and the greeting does nothing, just _nothing_ to translate the emotions filling him. 

(Tobio wants to learn if your lips would feel as soft as flower petals, or as warm as he had accidentally ended up dreaming of a few times and woken up blushing, embarrassed, yet thrilled. He wants to kiss you, but how, he doesn’t know that.)

You’ve grown this magnetic quality that always draws him in lately, much like the colour of the night sky, he wonders, much like the lightlessness that permeates the bottom of the sea. There’s always an excitement about the unknown, example being you. 

-“So, how’re the preparations for the nationals?” you ask. He replies, “good. They’re going fine.”

-“How the team will do, you think?”

He’s glad that you keep the conversation going, because the pressure of the unexpressed within him is driving him crazy, making his head spin. He tries to talk, but the conversation dies faster than expected, leaving that despondency hanging in the air separating you from him. Gone are the days when chit-chat would come as effortlessly as the rise and fall of chests while breathing (like the rise and fall of sea waves, which is always there, never disappearing away). Things are no more as they used to be. It pains you. 

-“I’ll get going then.” You ultimately give up, tired. There’s upheaval in his chest. _To fall or not to fall, to take a chance or not._

_Damn it._

In a moment’s whim, he grabs your wrist. “Wait,” he bumbles out. You’re supposed to be just friends, but for now, let that be forgotten. “Stay.”

You don’t remember what happens after that really: who pulls the other closer, who’s mouth inches nearer first. One moment you find his moist lips on yours and the next your mouth caving deeper into his, as if subject to some form of addiction. You only remember that not only your arms, but your tongues too entangle, movements desperate and furious. 

Tobio’s lips are tenderer than you had imagined. His wet mouth is warmer (you _love_ that temperature). And the emotions pouring out through every tiny motion, every swipe of his tongue inside your mouth, are not what you expected. They are more intense and fiery. You cannot pull away. Your fingers can only find refuge in his silky black hairs, digging into his scalp a little by little—as if it would anchor you to reality. If that’s the purpose of your pulling at his hairs then it does a poor, poor job. Tobio’s grip on your waist is death tight—unwilling to let go, like his lips on yours, yours on his—too hungry, too saturated with pent up longing that it’s impossible to part away, even for breathing. You share breaths instead. 

You are supposed to be just friends. You planned not to give in. But you do. You kiss Tobio Kageyama like there’s no tomorrow. And god, do you love it so much.

.

 **FOUR AND A HALF.** (As if as a result of foolish recklessness) you don’t get to have a single proper conversation with Tobio after that day. The final exams and graduations knock on your doorstep soon and there’s also the heightened pressure of entrances and cram school. It’s silent for a while, very, very silent. You call it an intermission, one that despite lasting for only a month and half feels like fifty years. The memory of that kiss shared in the empty gymnasium during the hours of fading daylight still returns to you at odd moments: in between the paragraphs of Japanese literature or when you try to balance a redox reaction.

If you said you only longed to see him, longed to feel his touch again, it will feel like an understatement. 

.

.

 **FIVE.** The receptacle containing courage is wobbly and fragile. Its walls are prone to cracking and all that’s inside flowing out. The air of the room definitely reeks of tension and awkwardness. You quickly glance sideways and find him staring at the half-packed luggage lying on the floor miserably.

-“So, you’re leaving then?” he speaks up after what seems hours. 

-“And so are you,” you respond. The uncomfortable quietness returns and the question hanging in the air grows more prominent: _“is this the end?”_

(The feel of his mouth melting into yours still lingers on your skin. And all you know is that you want to experience it again.)

-“Well, I was saying—“

-“Can I say something—“

You both begin and stop at the same time and this little coincidence gives you an excuse to turn your head about and meet Tobio’s cerulean gaze. It’s like the sea’s blue waters that stare up at your face from your post at the top of the cliff. The winds thrust onto your back, almost push you off. 

His lips still look so kissable. 

-“Go on,” you mutter out. The memory of your straying hands and battling tongues and of the breathless sounds that fall out of your mouth comes back to you and causes heat to spread through your cheeks. Scrunching his face at your proposal, he straightaway denies it. 

-“No, you go first.” _Let me see where this will go._

The words burn at the back of your throat like acid, and wait to be hurled out of your being. 

-“About that fake dating thing,” you mumble. “So, this means it’s over, right?”

Your dire wish is that he hears the disappointment in the notes of your voice. Maybe he does too, because his face falls further. 

-“Yes.”

 _Why yes, then?_ You want to cry out, why not _‘wish there was some other way?’_ The friendship on whose trust this was built has turned rickety and weak. Is that why, you wonder, why he doesn’t bark at you or exclaim out his feelings?

(Or is it simply because he doesn’t feel anything for you anymore?)

-“But I wish it was not that way,“ he admits.

To fall or not to fall is a useless question at this point, honestly. When he shoots you that wry, bittersweet smile brimming with longing, you realise that you’ve already fallen too deeply.

Now, it’s a question of whether to embrace what you see in front of your eyes or not: the logical impracticality of the option and the violently contrasted differences; to give in or not. You jumped to a fall a long time ago. Now there’s the choice of whether to break it and get out, or grow the courage to make nightly kisses and ‘I love you’s a routine. 

Your heart wants the latter.

-“Well me too,” you say out loud, a smile of your own on your face. (Fuck the rules; curse the logic that stops you from being a little stupid, a little brave). “Wish…wish…” your voice trails away. Tobio waits with bated breath. _Wish we were something more than just friends._

-“Wish it was _real_ , Tobio,” you complete. Suddenly, his insides are rid of every kind of burden and heft. He wants to say he loves you, and so he does. He jumps to the fall awaiting him and murmurs the words into the five inch wide gap between your mouths. 

-“Well honestly…” mumbles Tobio. “I think I really like you, no damn it, not _like_ ….more like I…I _love_ you, Y/n,” he confesses and then adds, “but it’s not…like _that_. 

"Go out with me? This time for real? I know, we are just friends and stuff but…”

When the ties of inhibitions loosen round your wrist and ankles and your body topples over, almost in slow motion, when the world accelerates around you and the winds whistle ‘congratulations’ into your ears, the sound of waves crashing against the rocks grows louder finally and your sinuses are lit up with crackling, twinkling joy.

You have only one answer: the smile on your face as you connect your lips for the second kiss you share with Tobio Kageyama. Who said friends can’t grow into lovers at the day’s end? After all, you bridged the chasm like gap that separated him from the rest of the world and managed to befriend his self that was perpetually reputed to be sullen, unwelcoming and arrogant.

But right now, your mind blanks out, these thoughts really don’t form. You are only aware of his mouth slanting deeper into yours, arms hitching you closer into his frame. The excitement building up inside you is of a different, different kind, but of a good kind nonetheless.

-“Of course I’ll go out with you dummy.” You chuckle. “This time for real.”

And you feel yourself dissolving away into the fall. 

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tobios-queen.tumblr.com


End file.
